Library Thing Rules!

I LOVE library thing. How did I not know about it's existence? The only thing that would make it more perfect- if you could track movies as well. Ohh- the though of it gives me the shivers!

LT was really easy to add to, though I did notice that it kept inserting the tags from my first entry into others. Not a huge biggie, I can live.

Here is my Library, I just pulled five titles I know we have to start with. I will definitely be adding a ton more.

As to Technorati, that was neat. I was sad to see my images still aren't showing in Flickr. I double checked that they were tagged correctly, but I may have to send them an email...I found the post search function to be the most interesting.

On a side note, I am well and truly entrenched on Facebook. It really is cool! I highly recommend others give it a try!

Addendum- Sunday, April 1st: Many thanks to Shortbeard the Pernicious who alerted me to DVD Aficionado. Check out my collection!

Behold! The Goodness that is Daft Punk!

As an example of my coolness, check out who's coming to Seattle- and I have tickets!!!!

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daft_Punk or their official site http://www.daftpunk.com/

There is an amazing DVD called Interstella 5555. Kazuhisa Takenôchi was so inspired by Daft Punk's music that he animated an entire movie to go with it. No dialogue, only animation and music. There are no words to describe it, so watch it!

Here's the plot courtesy of Amazon:

"An unscrupulous music executive and his flunky kidnap an alien, blue-skinned techno band, rob them of their identities, pass them off as human, and foist them on an unsuspecting public on Earth. After their arrival and their impact on the human population, the members of the band try to piece back their identities, escape from the clutches of the evil music executive, and return to their own world."

Anybody, who is Anybody is on Facebook

I previously reported that my teen in-laws didn’t make me their friend in MySpace. Crushing. But they do still like me and I AM cool enough to be their friend! I feel validated again. It turns out that MySpace is no longer cool enough and they have migrated over to Facebook where I will be joining them. Ta-Ta!

Del.icio.us

Looking around was weird because we aren’t actually logged in to the account, so I’m inferring that we’re linked to the bookmark page. To quote a phrase from library school that I usually reserve for my sarcastic voice- the “back-chaining” capability was intriguing. It reminded me of the Gale databases that allow you to link to similar articles via search terms or dare I say it- tags? I randomly "back-chained" related users and chose angrymartian just for grins. Not a huge surprise, his/her comments were pretty geeky.

I tried out a reference search to see what kind of results came up. As the presidential race starts simmering, we usually get asked for the previous election results or “that map that has the blue and red states”. Normally I would Google that request with dependable results. I put “presidential maps” into del.icio.us- gave it a bit of a challenge – and lo and behold it gave me a list of pretty handy bookmarks. Check out http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/, you might need it soon ;)

So, yes- I have to say it this could be very useful for both research and personal use.

Incorrect Assumptions

MySpace really is a single person Mecca. When I created my account and was asked all those lovely questions, I filled them in. Imagine my surprise when I looked at my profile and MySpace had assumed that
A: I was single and
B: I’m not interested in having children
Now, the first one is completely false (my 6th wedding anniversary is next weekend) and while the second is most likely correct- it’s not the kind of information I want listed on my online profile!! It must have taken at least 15 minutes of tinkering before I managed to correct it.

I was also vexed that MySpace took my zip code and listed my location as Bellevue, Western Australia, United States. I had to refresh the screen, entering the same information 8 times before it corrected to Bellevue, Washington. Now, I know that some people would find this infinitely amusing and leave it, but my A-type personality just couldn't stand it.

To add insult to injury, my teenage in-laws, well, they don’t want to be my friends. See if I let them raid my closet any time soon...

All in all, while I’ve been adding to MySpace, I’ll delete it when learning 2.0 is over. I am thinking about checking out Facebook when I get a chance, that sounds a little more my speed.

MySpace + Libraries = ?

While the rational part of me recognizes the usefulness of libraries joining MySpace to reach younger library users, I still have a hard time visualizing it. Most teens think we’re lame to start with- so how do we create spaces that are attractive and engaging? Is it harder to be lame online as opposed to in person? Since we’re creating these sites as groups and over time does that allow us to be more appealing? This generation shops at stores I’m afraid to go into- Abercrombie & Fitch is pretty imposing- plus I’ve yet to forgive them for replacing the Disney Store at Bell Square. I finally ventured into American Eagle but only with two teenagers to prove I was worthy of wandering around. I concede that this is a good way to reach teens, but it would take a focus group of teen approval before I'd be comfortable putting something up to attract them.

And now…it’s time for something completely different!

Here’s what’s going on in the wonderful world of knitting. For WLA Last year I knitted up a matching scarf and hat for the CAYAS IG basket. Not wanting to be repetitive this year, I thought I’d reach a little higher and try something new. My bold idea: socks. Harder than they appear non-knitters. Hilltop Yarn in Seattle, http://www.hilltopyarn.com/, had emailed me a newsletter at the end of the year that had a pattern for some cozy fireside socks. Hilltop East (the sister store) was kind enough to hunt the pattern down and ship it from one store to another. Now, I own a set of circular needles with most of the needles sizes. Imagine my consternation when I discovered that I would need to buy two new sets of needles to make these socks. I don’t use double pointed needles a lot, so I thought I’d pick up a pair of inexpensive needles at Joann’s or Michaels, but neither store carried them in the correct sizes. Most vexing. I was at Ben Franklin and their helpful knitting guy sold me a booklet for the Magic Loop, http://www.fibertrends.com/viewer/patterns/0_magicloop.html. This method allows you to use circular needles as double pointed. This was great news! No more new needles, I could use my big set. Ah, but this was not to be- in order to use this technique you need to have a 36 inch cord and my set requires using connector pieces to do that. Curses, I was foiled again. I caved and bought my new needles sets and started knitting away. After three socks, I had my pair. See the photo below. If you’re at WLA in the Tri-Cities they’ll be in the CAYAS gift basket!

RSS and the Boiling Point of the Human Brain

I woke up this morning and I was feeling pretty good about RSS. I fed my cats, starting surfing the web while they ate, and logged in to Blogline instead of clicking through my usual routine of websites. I have to admit that it worked pretty well- even the Seattle times which I thought would be cumbersome as an RSS.

Then I got to work and started the new set of tasks with RSS and my enthusiasm faded...

Going to my favorite sites was WAY easier than searching for them. Syndic8 was too cluttered, too busy- and I didn't like the search results. I liked the subject tabs that Topix uses, but I wouldn't use it to search for RSS sites. I liked the look of the Google Blog search, but I didn't get the kind of results I wanted. I had better luck doing a regular Google search. Bottom line- I didn't find any sites to add using these search tools.

I did have some luck with Feedster, but again the search results weren't too hot. I was perturbed that it defaulted to date instead of relevance. My personal preference is to find what I’m looking for and then check the date. I found a site I liked, erroneously closed the window, typed in my search again and the results weren't repeated! This may be a occupational job hazard, but if I do a search once and get a result, and I repeat the exact search in a matter of minutes, I shouldn't have to spend another 5 minutes using different search terms to re-find the blog I wanted. This made me go grrrrrr......Overall, I was happiest with my results from Blogline. The results were good and the page reasonably uncluttered compared to some of the other search tools.

Then I started to look for library themed feeds. I searched in all of the above, and ended up using two from the 27things list. I thought Library Bytes and Librarian.net were the most interesting. Again, I wasn’t impressed with the search results; most of the content was unappetizing.

Upon looking at my blogline account I now have 14 feeds being updated. I have to admit to feeling a bit overwhelmed. I don't know that I really want to read through that much daily. Only time will tell.

RSS & News Readers

I'm glad to finally know what those RSS and XML icons are all about. I find the concept interesting, especially as it pertains to websites that may not be continuously updated like news websites.

I've been working on a new knitting project- the brave new world of socks- and I was surprised to find the best online tutorials and videos came off of blogs. Using Bloglines to keep track of updates will be easier than checking in every once in a while to see what's new.

I'm not so sure how I feel about using it for news, if I want to check the headlines I just pop over to Google news or the Seattle Times. Then I can scan titles for what interests me. Having everything in one place may be nice, but sometimes I just want to take a quick peek at what’s going on locally. If I’m using Bloglines to keep up to date on the news, I am just as likely to get distracted by a new knitting post.

The site I was most interested in adding to Bloglines, http://ultimatedisney.com , doesn't do RSS yet. This is a shame because they have great articles on DVD releases/reviews, and that would have been helpful. I’ll keep an eye out for the RSS icon in the future.

I'm not sure how libraries could use RSS, that's an interesting question. I think that library blogs could be a new way to share information with staff, but unless the staff person is already using reader software- they might as well just check the library blog.

I'll continue checking up on feeds through Bloglines as Learning 2.0 progresses, and who knows, I might change my mind. But at the moment, I'll only really use it for keeping track of the things that are not updated daily.

Fun with Flickr/Mashups

Tonight I poked around with Flickr/mashups and liked some more than others.

I liked Spell with Flickr, I don't know what I'd use it for, but it was neat to click on the letters and have it pull up new ones. The dark background and font was a bit of overkill. It might be my bad eyes, but I gave up trying to read the blog. I was also surprised to see the coding towards the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure what it's there for...I did appreciate that the ads were optional and not forced upon you. It was odd that all the links took you to the same google ads page, but that's why it's a mashup and not a polished product.

I am very intrigued by the Trading Card Maker, but that will require being on my home PC and my digital library. Being board games geeks, this definitely could have usable applications. I used some sample images and even without thinking too hard came up with a neat card. The hard part will be creating a viable game to go with them. It's like making your own Magic deck!

Lamanai Ruins, Belize

Lamanai Ruins, Belize
Originally uploaded by amazingknittingkitty.

Last March my husband and I went on a Western Caribbean cruise for our anniversary. One of our favorite experiences was in Belize where we visited the Lamanai Ruins. There were three large structures like this, and we were allowed to climb two of them. The view from the top was amazing and we could see even more ruins that had been over taken by the jungle.

Using Flickr was surprisingly easy. I started by wandering around the house taking photos of bookish type things, stacks of book, our various bookcases, etc...

I found the upload process no difficult than uploading photos to Costco. It was the tagging process that I found the most interesting. It reminded me of being at the iSchool and my intro to cataloging class- I must confess that was my only cataloging class. It was fun to think of all the ways to identify the objects in my pictures, and let's just say the tag IKEA was included.

I only meant to upload and tag the 5 shots I'd taken for the purpose of using with Flickr, but I was inspired enough to upload some other shots in my digital library like this one. I felt them to be more visually interesting than my bookcases.

I found it very intuitive to go back in to delete tags (like the one assigned to my bookcase) and change descriptions, even adding this photo to my blog proved to be pain free.

Personally, I don't think Flickr is viable for all photos, at least not the way I use them. Indexing hundreds of photos would make my brain melt. But for the few exceptional photos, the tagging could be quite useful and browsing through other public photos is quite entertaining.